The appearance of large turf surfaces is increasingly important to the owners of property having such surfaces. It is often very important to someone who owns a golf course that the fairways and greens be well maintained and present a beautiful, well groomed appearance. However, this desire is not unique to the golf course industry. It is shared by the owners of commercial buildings, cemeteries, sports fields, parks, and the like, many of which have large turf surfaces that must be maintained.
In addition, many such turf surfaces are increasingly landscaped with trees, brushes or flower beds running through them or extending along their periphery. Many golf courses today aspire to have a picture postcard look. This involves fairways that are often extensively lined with trees, bushes and other plantings. The grounds adjacent commercial buildings are now usually heavily landscaped with flowers, bushes and trees.
Another trend in this industry is increasing attention to the health and growth of the turf surface itself. It has long been known that grass will grow more quickly and be healthier if the turf surface is periodically aerated. Core aeration is a common form of aeration and involves punching hollow aerating tines into the turf surface. Each aerating tine withdraws a soil core topped by a thatch of grass with the aeration cores usually simply being deposited on top of the turf surface as the aerator passes over the turf surface.
The desire for a well groomed, manicured turf surface is at odds with heavily landscaped, aerated turf surfaces. Such turf surfaces often become quickly littered with vegetative debris, such as twigs, branches, leaves, seed pods, acorns, etc., that falls or is blown from the adjacent landscaping. This happens more or less continuously throughout the active growing season of the landscaping. In addition, the turf surface will also often be littered with aeration cores after the turf surface has been aerated.
Many sweepers have been designed for attempting to pick up and remove debris from a turf surface. Such sweepers are often small walk-behind units that have a front mounted brush that sweeps up and deposits the debris into some type of collection basket behind the brush. These sweepers often must be pushed by the operator over the turf surface. In addition, the collection basket must be periodically emptied of collected debris which is usually done by the operator by manually removing the basket, inverting the basket, and dumping the debris out of the basket. Some times these sweepers are simply brushes added to conventional bagging type lawn mowers.
It should be obvious that walk-behind sweepers of the type just described are not intended for picking up debris from large turf surfaces but are more for use in a homeowner's yard. It would take an inordinately long time or an inordinately large number of sweepers to clean debris from a large turf surface, such as the fairways on a golf course. The cost in equipment and manpower to perform such an operation would be prohibitive. In addition, it would be very physically strenuous work for the operators.
At least one sweeper has been designed and is currently being sold for picking up and removing debris from large turf surfaces. This sweeper includes a frame that is trailed or towed behind a vehicle such as a utility vehicle or tractor. The sweeper includes a powered rotary brush that sweeps debris from the turf surface into a collecting hopper. The collecting hopper is pivotally coupled to the frame to allow the collecting hopper to be pivoted from a lower collecting position to an upper dumping position for dumping the debris from the hopper.
While this trailed sweeper is certainly more efficient in picking up debris from a large turf surface than its walk behind brethren, it nonetheless presents certain problems of its own. For example, the collecting hopper is pivoted to the frame behind the transport wheels. Thus, as the collecting hopper fills with debris, particularly debris that is heavy such as aeration cores left over after aeration, the increasing weight of the collection hopper progressively lessens the weight or downforce on the hitch tongue of the tow frame. In fact, when the collecting hopper becomes heavy enough, the tongue weight will actually switch from positive to negative. This will bias the rear of the towing vehicle upwardly and thereby lessen the traction of the towing vehicle, at a time when the towing vehicle needs traction the most due to the increasing weight of the debris sweeper, to potentially cause the towing vehicle to come to a stop.
Another problem with this sweeper is the fact that the rotary pick up brush does not follow the ground in a side-to-side manner. Many large turf surfaces with which this sweeper is used are not flat. In fact, the trend is to highly contour such surfaces so that they roll and dip a fair amount. Thus, the pick up brush used in this trailed sweeper will sometimes be out of contact with the turf surface and will miss some of the debris lying on the turf surface.